Dick Falkenbury grew up and spent most of his life in the Roosevelt area of Seattle. He began driving cabs in 1978, later becoming a tour driver and tour bus driver in 1992. In 1996, having worked in many liberal political campaigns in the Seattle area, Falkenbury wrote and led an initiative effort to build a monorail throughout Seattle.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..

This and That, Then and Now

You didn’t think I would pass up the story of JP Morgan losing $2 billion? It is not ‘none of our business’ because the bank end of JP M counts on the FDIC to bail them out and the ‘too big to allow-to-fail’ notion saves them on the investment side. They are a government/taxpayer guarnanteed business and we all know it. What they do with their money is our business.

What really caught my attention was the use of the word ‘bet’ in the Seattle Times’ story: “(Some analyists) said the bank appeared to have been betting for its own benefit….” Excuse me for being old school, but since when do banks ‘bet’? They are supposed to invest. These investments–money–are supposed to help people create goods and services, which are sold to pay back the investments. But derivatives are nothing like investments. They are simply ‘bets’ that the market, an indicator or your cat’s temperture is going to go up. They create no goods and services.

They ought to be outlawed–like most gambling. Or at least, banks ought to not participate.

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I hear Channel 9 coming from my mother’s room. I can hear ‘Doctor Martin’ and a couple of times I have watched.

It is wretched. Unfunny. Undramatic. And totally unbelievable. The main character–the ‘Doctor Martin’ in question, is harsh, mean and condescending. He is an unrelentingly irritable man. There is no redeeming character quality in the man. The work is not only not funny, it has the strench of hatred running through the whole work.

I dare anyone to tell me what the ‘funny part’ is. “Northern Exposure’ did this far better, years ago. This thing could only survive on public television–and this is one reason why public television sucks (except for ‘The Antique Roadshow’ and the news).

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Vidal Sasoon died and is being hailed as ‘the most famous hairdresser the world has ever known’.

I hate to spray water your ‘do’ but I would rather think that Delilah is a bit more famous in that department.

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Sound Transit had some seven miles of copper wire stolen. It was inside the elevated track and the copper wire is there basically as a ‘ground’ wire. ST says that it would be almost impossible to have avoided having the copper stolen.

Unless you ran a very small electrical current through the wire (when the bad guys cut it, the current would be interrupted).

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Do you really think this Romney giving some poor guy a haircut in highschool is the last ‘relevation’ about the Republican presumptive? The next shoe to fall will be past tax records.

Do you really think Obama had no idea that the Romney story would be coming out? The President comes out for gay marriage in the same news cycle that Romney is revealed as gay-bashing? Probably just a coincidence. Yeah, that’s it.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..